November 4, 2025 12:20PM # Why Aren’t More Health Policy Commentators Libertarians? By [Michael F. Cannon](https://www.cato.org/people/michael-f-cannon) --- SHARE Listen to this article Generated with [ ElevenLabs](https://elevenlabs.io/) AI technology. Loading the [Elevenlabs Text to Speech](https://elevenlabs.io/text-to-speech) AudioNative Player... Cato adjunct scholar [Charles Silver](https://www.cato.org/people/charles-silver) poses that question in the title of [a guest post](https://www.sensible-med.com/p/why-arent-more-health-policy-commentators?utm_source=post-email-title&publication_id=1000397&post_id=176413039&utm_campaign=email-post-title&isFreemail=false&r=abawd&triedRedirect=true&utm_medium=email) at John Mandrola’s and Adam Cifu’s [Sensible Medicine](https://www.sensible-med.com/) Substack. ![The Thinker](/sites/cato.org/files/styles/pubs_2x/public/2025-11/Thinker.jpg?itok=bDjgd2-b) Cifu, a professor of medicine and general internist at the University of Chicago, praises Silver’s essay: > *This is the sort of essay I love. I had no idea what to expect. I wanted to object to nearly every sentence until the following sentence made me reconsider my objections. I’m still not sure my opinions have changed, but I am certainly better for having read this.* Silver writes: > [Across the country](https://www.americanprogress.org/article/rfk-jr-is-systematically-undermining-vaccine-science-and-endangering-health/), policymakers, scientists, health professionals, and advocates are calling to remove politics from vaccine policy, to promote evidence-based health policy, and to remove \[RFK Jr.\] as health secretary. > > Yet, as far as I have been able to discover, the widespread desire to “remove politics” from health care policy has not led a single mainstream commentator to call for downsizing the government’s role.… > > What I fail to understand is why mainstream commentators expect better. To me, the doctors and academics who [support](https://pnhp.org/news/doctors-support-the-medicare-for-all-act-of-2023/) the ACA, Medicare For All, the public option, and other government-centric policies seem to be as ignorant of politics as Trump & Co. are of medicine. [Read the whole thing.](https://www.sensible-med.com/p/why-arent-more-health-policy-commentators) ##### Related Tags [Health Care](https://www.cato.org/health-care), [Libertarianism](https://www.cato.org/libertarianism) [![Creative Commons License](/build/cato_2020/images/creative-commons.svg)](http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/) This work is licensed under a [Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License](https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/).